Skyera, a US-based data storage provider, has raised $45.6m in its series B round from a consortium including computer maker Dell’s corporate venturing unit,
Dell Ventures led the round that climbed to $51.6m once the seed stage was included. Other strategic investors rather than any venture capital firm filled out the round.
[Editor’s note: In March 2013, Western Digital, a Nasdaq-listed technology company, said its corporate venturing unit, Western Digital Capital, also invested in the B round “as an extension of the strategic relationship between the two companies that also includes joint technology development”. Western Digital had previously funded Skyera as its initial outside investor.]
Skyera, formerly known as StorCloud, offers its SkyHawk all-flash storage arrays at $3 per gigabyte.
Jim Lussier, managing director of Dell Ventures, which plans to invest $60m in enterprise storage start-ups, said: “We see solid-state technology as a game changer and one of several fertile areas for investment.
“The investment in Skyera is one example of how we are deploying our Fluid Data Storage Fund to target areas critical to the evolution of storage, and how our venture investing activity supports Dell’s innovation strategy and helps strengthen our enterprise solutions capabilities.”
Marius Haas, president of the enterprise solutions group for Dell, added: “Dell continues to expand its growing enterprise systems portfolio to help our customers do more. We are focused on changing the economics of storage and other systems for our customers by bringing high-end enterprise features to the broad mid-market and solving enterprise problems at a mid-range price point.”
Radoslav Danilak, founder and chief executive of Skyera, said: “Dell and the investment syndicate bring deep knowledge of the storage sector that will be beneficial to Skyera as we take our next steps.”